Re-purposed from a post at the ‘Stache earlier today
I hope everyone had a thoroughly enjoyable Thanksgiving, and have already made all your Black Friday purchases. My Thanksgiving sucked, and I had to work until 2AM this morning, so there really was no way I was going to top that off by waiting outside of Radio Shack. I do know that my team, the Twins have done a little holiday shopping and won the bidding on Tsuyoshi Nishioka. This is exciting. Sure, you could say it’s stability for the infield somewhere down the line (assuming they can work out a contract, of course), but I’m really excited to see how Ron Gardenhire will do with another ethnicity in the clubhouse.
Think about it. Gardenhire has (even in my opinion) developed some pretty good players under his watch. Justin Morneau, Joe Mauer… Jason Kubel is even coming along pretty well. His successes with other ethnicities are somewhat limited, at least in regards to positional players. The only African American who has really left an impact on the Twins that came up with Gardenhire as manager has been Denard Span, who hit in the .260s as a lead off guy this year. Delmon Young came from Tampa, and really only got a shot at playing regularly when Justin Morneau went down for the season. Latin American players are even more hamstrung in the Twins organization. Quick name the best Latin position prospect the Twins have had in the last 8 years. Waiting. Waiting. Alexi Casilla, maybe? Jose Morales?
As much as I kid Ron Gardenhire, he is essentially a bad strategic manager, but generally a very welcoming and instructive manager in terms of fundamentals. The problem is with the organization, which doesn’t have much in terms of Hispanic coaching, and Hispanic players just struggle to develop. I can’t imagine things will be different for Nishioka. At least he’s 26, and perhaps he already has all the tools. Right? Right?! Anyways, I hope he doesn’t suck.
So enough of that, let’s watch a video of this guy, shall we?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUgDJD7ZM4A&fs=1&hl=en_US]
This is going to be interesting. I hope they sign him, just for the potential comedy.
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